Snowy is one of the two Pyrenean Mountain dogs that live with me. Those who have met her know her to be a big, fluffy, goofy dog that likes to barks at anything that moves, is very lazy on walks, and has the sweetest eyes – that is, of course, when she’s not barking at something. That would be her ‘usual self’. About a month ago she started acting – hmm, what is the word – well, ‘odd’, to say the least.

One significant change was her behavior towards Cesar. She would usually be gentle with him and allow him to come close and lick him once in a while, but otherwise not be too ‘phased’ about his presence. He was able to come up to her and lean against her while she remained calm and patient. Now, about a month ago, what started happening every time Cesar came into the room, or if she could hear him in the other room, she would immediately go into ‘high alert mode’ and start following him around as though to ‘keep an eye on him’ that he doesn’t do anything that ‘he’s not supposed to’ – yet at the same time, try to back off when he would come close. So – she was literally pacing around him while trying to keep a certain distance at the same time. If she would sit, it would be for a second, and then she was up pacing again. And when he did manage to come close, she would seem to be fighting within herself where on the one side she’d want to scare him away/off of her and on the other hand, obsessively lick him all over.

The other significant change was that she started adopting a toy as though it was her baby. Where, she would pick one toy and keep it with her at all times. When she was walking around, it would be in her mouth and when she was laying down, she would put it in front or next to her and lick it. And when she’d lose her toy, she would go around to everyone making a whining/crying sound. One night, she was standing besides me whining/crying, but she had her toy (at that moment her ‘baby’ was a monkey-teddy) in her mouth. So, I wasn’t sure what she wanted. Eventually, I figured out she was trying to find a ‘safe space’ for her and her ‘baby’. She only stopped crying/whining once I made a little ‘cave’ for her with pillows under LJ’s desk.

The behavior of her taking a toy as a baby, we had seen before and so we thought it was part of a hormonal cycle – where this motherly behavior gets triggered by hormones – and that somehow she had translated that behavior to Cesar as well. Of course, with Cesar, she started to become a ‘danger-point’ as she was unpredictable while within that ‘high alert’ energy – and with her being a large dog, we kept her away from Cesar as much as possible, waiting for this ‘hormonal phase’ to pass. But it didn’t…

So, one night I realized this was carrying on for too long and that something else must be going on. I placed my hand on her chest, breathed and then checked which person was a match for the point she was working with – which of course, was me – lol.

The next point was to see: what point is she showing me about myself??

What opened up for me was quite fascinating – I don’t know if I would have seen/realized this point if it weren’t for my Snowy-bear assisting me with such specificity – I’ll share in my next post!

“So, one night I realized this was carrying on for too long (Snowy’s odd behavior in relation to Cesar and her toys) and that something else must be going on. I placed my hand on her chest, breathed and then checked which person was a match for the point she was working with – which of course, was me – lol.

The next point was to see: what point is she showing me about myself??

What opened up for me was quite fascinating – I don’t know if I would have seen/realized this point if it weren’t for my Snowy-bear assisting me with such specificity – I’ll share in my next post!”

To see what point Snowy and I were working with, I kept one hand on her chest and placed the other on her side. The first thing I looked at was identifying the energy that was running – because that was the most noticeable about her behavior – as soon as she would hear or see Cesar, or as soon as she picked up a toy – a particular energy started directing her behavior – where no matter what we said or did – the energy was not moving out or diminishing and she continued to follow the energy – we couldn’t ‘snap her out of it’ or even ‘get through to her’. When identifying the energy, the word ‘protectiveness’ came up. Snowy takes her ‘protective role’ always quite seriously, but now every time she’d hear/see Cesar, that protectiveness went into over-drive.

As soon as I placed the word ‘protectiveness’ within me to check if that was the word – I could feel/became aware of ‘lines’ that together formed a particular geometric shape and that shape covered my abdominal area. Here – I remembered the article from Jack where he explained how weight in the abdomen is due to protecting fears.

So – this was getting more and more interesting – because the word ‘protectiveness’ was showing to contain more than one dimension – it was not just about protecting others, but also about protecting myself and protecting fears. So I focused in on that geometrical shape that I felt over my abdomen and saw two sides to it. On the one side I saw it relating to the symbology of pregnancy – where a baby is in the belly, protected by the uterus and abdomen – so an experience of safety/security. On the other hand I saw how the geometric shape was somewhat like the door of a prison cell – so, here I was looking at self-limitation – fear and insecurity.

I could see how that polarity had played out in Snowy’s behavior – where on the one hand she was ‘excessively nurturing’ – with her toys as well as licking Cesar all over when he would get close to her – yet on the other hand, she was seeing Cesar as a threat and tried to protect herself from him.

(If my story is sounding a bit jumbled, it’s because I’m trying to tell it the way it opened up for me – so bear with me if it’s not sounding very coherent, lol – it did kind of open up as ‘pop, pop, pop’ – I started seeing the factors at play, the ingredients if you will – but did not yet see how I had ‘cooked it up’ for myself or how it all strings together – that I looked at afterwards.)

At that point I was satisfied that I had identified the energy as being ‘protectiveness’ and that it was related to motherhood and that there was a polarity construct involved. But keeping a discussion I’d recently had with Esteni in mind, as well as the tools introduced in the SRA3 course of Desteni I Process – I could see I hadn’t ‘gotten to the bottom of it yet’ – I so far had only opened up a particular behavior and how that behavior was driven by an energy – but I had not yet identified the source point. I knew I had to identify one word – one word that contains a polarity in its definition – where ‘protectiveness’ is how I ‘live out’ the polarity of that word in my reality.

Now that word – interestingly enough, is: ‘Life’.

It was easier to see the word by looking at the positive polarity – the positive polarity being: what is it I desire to protect? So – looking at motherhood – protecting a baby – protecting innocence – I could see that it boils down to: protecting ‘pure’ life. Then I looked at the negative polarity to see if the word ‘life’ is accurate – so I checked: Is life something I fear/something I feel I have to protect myself from? And the answer was ‘yes’ – meaning: life as life on Earth as it exists today. Growing up, the world seems like a scary place – people are so unpredictable and I definitely felt insecure. So – my definition of the word ‘life’ existed within a polarity – giving rise to both a desire and a fear – and the energy and behavior of ‘protectiveness’ was driven by that desire and fear.

So now I had the rough outline of the construct. Then I looked at how I had created and lived this construct as myself – what decisions I made from within this construct and how I shaped ‘me’ and ‘my life’ from within and as this construct – I will share that process in my next post.

This blog post is a continuation to the following posts – please read them first for context:

Day 153: Snowy – My Mountain of Support
Day 154: Snowy – My Mountain of Support – Pt2

I explained in my previous post how I saw the particular construct I required to work with that Snowy had been showing me by living it out. I saw how the energy I was working with was ‘protectiveness’ and how the word in relation to which I would activate the word ‘protectiveness’ was the word ‘life’. I saw how there was both a positive polarity of desiring to protect life as well as a negative polarity as trying to protect myself from life.

As a child and growing up, I have always been reserved when interacting with others. Not that I would always stay in the background or be a loner or be the shy one in a group – I would make friends and have fun – but I would always be ready to ‘pull out’ in case I felt I had to. I had noticed that no matter how ‘nice’ a friend or a family member may seem in one moment, in another they can suddenly change and ‘turn against me’ – often unexpectedly, where I ‘wasn’t prepared for it’. The same with animals – in one moment a dog could be gentle and in another they could suddenly snap their teeth. The same with nature – the one moment I am playing in the garden on the grass, the next I get stung by a bee. In all these instances I felt that my sense of security was false, that I wasn’t really safe from ‘life’ as how I experienced it.

What I saw within using the tools of SRA3, is that I had defined the words ‘safe/protected’ within a mother-child relationship. You know – when you’re a child and you’re just sitting next to your mom on the couch and you rest your head on her chest, she wraps your arm around you and you can hear her breathing and her heartbeat – that experience of ‘I am protected, I am safe, nothing can happen to me’. That experience is what I desired.

So – within deciding who I would be within my life, I wanted that point of safety/protectedness to be a part of it. Of course, I couldn’t stay a child forever living with my mother – but I could become a mother myself. Because, a mother and child, I presumed, both take part in the same experience of safetyness/protectedness. Herein – my perception of mothers was also relevant. Of all the adults and their extent of participation and interaction with ‘life’ as that which I saw as unpredictable and dangerous – I thought mothers were the least exposed, because they are at home taking care of the children. Perhaps that is why I would say I wanted to become a mother of 5 kids – to make sure I’d never have the time to do anything else but be a mother, lol – but remain secluded, protected in the safety of my own home.

That was how the negative polarity to the word ‘life’ influenced ‘who I wanted to be in life’.

The positive polarity of the word ‘life’ refers to seeing life as something pure and innocent – and yet so fragile – something that can be easily corrupted, hurt and abused. From within my own fear of the ‘outside world’ – ‘life as we know it’ – I created a desire to protect this ‘pure, innocent’ life – and where I had defined this ‘pure/innocent life’ to exist was in babies and young children – the ones not yet influenced too much by ‘the world’ – who were still blissfully ignorant and under the impression that ‘life’ is welcome here. So – from the positive polarity of my definition of the word ‘life’ I wanted to be someone who protects ‘life’ in this world and of all the social roles in society – I saw that mothers taking care of babies/children were the ones to fit this bill.

So – through accepting both the fear and desire that sprung up within me from both the negative and positive polarities of my definition of the word ‘life’, I created a behavioral design of ‘protectiveness’ within me – both in relation to protecting myself as well as protecting others. That was the same behavior I saw in Snowy – where on the one hand she wanted to protect herself against Cesar, seeing him as a ‘threat’ while at the same time ‘protecting him’ through playing a nurturing role towards him.

I then went and wrote about all these points, applied my Self-Forgiveness and wrote my Self-Corrective Statements to remove the separation I had created towards the word ‘life’, to redefine the word as myself and diffuse this construct as a whole. I had shared with LJ and Leila what I’d seen in terms of how Snowy’s behavior mirroring mine. After I had done all my writing, SF and SCS – Snowy’s behavior immediately changed, lol. She was back to her ‘old self’. Leila noticed the drastic change in Snowy and asked me if I’d worked on my points – to which I said ‘yes’ with a big smile, lol. So – this was a very cool feedback point again –where Snowy showed me: you got it, girl – my work here is done. Lol. I gave her a big hug, amazed and grateful for the unconditional support that she is.